I-C 7 structural adjustment programs. Against this backdrop, opposing elites engaged in savage
competition and extremist politics that led to civil war and genocide.
22
In Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, marginalized peasants, predominantly drawn from Mayan indigenous communities, rose up in 1994. The conflict, which took more political
than violent forms, was driven by rampant inequality widespread poverty in the face of natural wealth, demands for land reform, population pressures, inappropriate farming and
ranching methods, rapid deforestation, austerity and lack of rural credit, and the domination of the political system by narrowly-based elites.
23
Energy, water availability, food security, and infectious disease are among the major concerns in the environment-security-conflict nexus. Below is a brief discussion of these
factors, along with considerations of livelihood and habitability issues and the impact of disasters increasingly driven or worsened by environmental degradation.
a. Energy
24
Energy issues manifest themselves in a number of ways, and are strongly focused on the dominant and most sought-after commercial source, petroleum.
Especially in the mainstream discussion, the connection between energy and security is being discussed as a challenge of supply security. The current discussion is
shaped in particular by the rising demand in fast-developing countries such as China and India, which join the United States, Europe, and Japan as voracious consumers
and heavily import-dependent nations. Supply security is both a concern about physical supplies with the rate of new oil discoveries falling since the 1960s and
political developments in oil-rich nations. The economic security of both supplier and buyer nations is potentially compromised by severe price swings.
Major powers have repeatedly intervened in resource-rich countries, militarily and by other means, in order to directly control, or more broadly secure access to, lucrative
resources. The result has often been enduring political instability. Against the backdrop of surging demand for oil, geopolitical rivalries for preferential access are
today again intensifying among major importers.
Oil income has led to a massive militarization in some regions particularly the Middle East. Governments of oil-rich nations have tended to over invest in weapons and
armies, and underinvest in human needs. And in a number of oil producing countries such as Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq, and Colombia, oil resources have either
driven internal conflicts or helped finance such struggles, leading to massive human rights violations and an erosion of human security.
Finally, oil along with natural gas and coal of course plays a central role with regard to carbon emissions and thus climate stability, an issue that poses grave threats to human
safety everywhere on the planet.
22
Michael Renner, Fighting for Survival. Environmental Decline, Social Conflict, and the New Age of Insecurity New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1996, pp. 114-122.
23
Ibid., pp. 122-130.
24
Thomas Prugh, Christopher Flavin and Janet L. Sawin, “Changing the Oil Economy,” in State of the World 2005, op. cit note 14, pp. 100-119; Michael Renner, “Resource Dimensions
of the Global Security Agenda,” Paper presented at Conference on Rethinking Global Security: An African Perspective, Nairobi, Kenya, 23 February 2006.
I-C 8
b. Water
